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Writing At Home Workouts

One of the greatest things I like about coaching is when clients begin to workout not only in the gym, but at home on their own as well. I believe it shows dedication and a liking for what it is they learned while taking part in classes. Sometimes however, the hardest thing about working out on your own is how to program your own workouts. Although there are several opinions out there, I am going to show you my layout for creating workouts so that you can be more effective and efficient in writing workouts of your own.

Phases: I like to break both my personal workouts and workouts you will see at OTL Fitness into 3 phases. These phases being: Warm up/movement prep, Strength/Power/Speed, and The Work. These 3 phases create the bones of my programming. From here, I like to work my way from the middle at Strength/Power/Speed, to my Work then to my warm up so that my Work/Strength sections do not interfere with one another and my warm up preps first (warm up part 1) generally then second (warm up part 2) specifically to what will be happening next.

I choose this order because I want to get my biggest bang for my buck in the strength section first (I believe strength is primary in order to build larger work capacity) and have my Work section built around what happensor doesn’t happen in the strength section.

When deciding for yourself at home which movements to put where, keep it simple. In your strength sections, think big lifts: Dead lifts, squats, pressing, Sandbags, Kettlebells. Don’t over think anything. I like to keep my heavy days at no more than 12 total reps (not including warm up). I like sets such as: 3-3-3-3 or 3-2-1-2-3 and 4-4-4. Give yourself rest between each set and during that rest throw in some auxiliary work such as band pull a parts, pull downs, bent over flys, etc. If you just want to go with the lifts only and no auxiliary that is fine as well.

During the work section, I tend to stay away from complex lifts like olympic lifts at high repetition and low weight (hang power cleans are usually the exception as long as technique is before speed). I usually keep those in my Strength section. This is also a great place for speed work or longer runs. Depending on how intense the Strength section was, this can be a spot for structural work such as FLR’s, chin over bar holds, or Over head holds.

An example day for this would be: 5 Rounds of: 50 Meter Sprint + 10-15 Russian swings at a moderately heavy weight. Rest 90 seconds between each Round. Following the 5 Rounds, complete a 2-3 minute chin over bar hold with pull up grip, not chin up grip.

In that entire Strength section I could use as little as 1 movement and in the Work section as little as 3 just as shown above.

Whatever you do when writing your workouts, just remember that simple is effective. You don’t have to have complex formulas or percentages. The most important thing is that you do it! Don’t waste time overthinking it when you could spend that time with a barbell on your back.

If you ever need help in creating your at home workouts, just let me know, I would love to help anyway I can.

Do you have a specific way you like to write your programming? Share it with me, I love learning new things from our great fitness community!